Lessons from Zion
The Zion National Park is a journey into awesome towering rock walls, beautiful trees, crystal blue skies and a refreshingly cold flowing river. The further you travel up the river, the closer and closer the rock walls get until you are forced to either forge the river or abandon the path and turn around. Unfortunately, because I was unprepared to forge the river, I had to to stop my forward progress and turn around.
This amazing natural wonder took my breath away. As I reflect on my journey into and out of the National Park, I learned a few lessons.
Beauty can come from disaster
The first is that beauty can come from disaster. The Zion valley is a result of a giant flood that encompassed the whole area eons ago. The water slowly etched away at the rocks and the beauty and wonder of what we have today is a direct result of the receding waters. Disaster often seems like it is the end of the world. As a Christ follower, I see this example best in the life of Christ. His disciples felt the disaster of the cross. They were flooded with failure, foolishness, and fear. Everything they worked for came to an end with the burial of Jesus in the tomb. Then, three days later, the "waters" receded if you will, the most beautiful event in recorded history was revealed. The tomb was empty. Jesus was not dead, he rose from the grave and is alive. The empty tomb changed the disciples lives in the most dramatic way possible. Now everything made sense. Now they were filled with purpose and not despair. The Zion National Park is a monument to the reality that disasters can turn out beautiful, if we simply entrust the moment into the Master’s hands.
Beauty is hidden in the desert.
I have driven up and down the 15 freeway from Las Vegas to Saint George, Utah many times. This is the first time I turned off the main highway and headed deep into the desert. The drive along the 15 at the Zion National Park is unimpressive. It is one sage bush after another. It is flowing sand and distant mountains. It is brown, rocky and generally a place to pass through, not stop and wander. However, this time my wife and I stopped. We exited the highway and drove on the road further into the desert. When we got to the park I was filled with wonder and awe struck at the beauty I had never seen. How could such a beautiful place be located in such a desolated location? How could I have missed it all these years? It is just over five hours from my house and I have never seen it before. I missed it because I never stopped. I never went looking for it. I missed it. I wonder how many other things in my life have I missed because I have simply been too busy going from one point to another point in my life? How many times did I not take a break from the urgent to examine the amazing? Life gets busy. There are deadlines to meet, challenge to address and mundane but necessary moments that take all my time. My lesson from this journey is to turn off the path every now and then and be awestruck by the beauty. I found it off the road in the desert.
Beauty can be copied
Humanity can only copy what God did it first. There was a section of the walk in the Zion canyon where it looked fake. It looked like I had seen it before in a museum or at Disneyland. The plants were in perfect shape as they were imbedded into the moist rock wall, the colors were amazingly vibrant, and even the man made fencing was simple. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at the original. Everything else I saw before was a copy of this section. I was in the priceless artwork. I was walking through what movies, museums and murals all have tried to duplicate. What was at one time in my mind only a 2D image, was in reality real as I took each step. This masterpiece could be touched, felt, sensed. Human’s didn’t create this, God did. We just copied what he did first.
It gets even better, one day there will be a new heaven, one filled with perfection, not stained with sin. I was only looking at the remnant of the garden. One day I will see the garden in its completeness, its fullness, its completeness. From destruction comes beauty, hidden beauty that we can only copy.
So today, I will relish in what I saw and experienced. I will remember its glory and I will look forward to the day where I can walk through the renewed garden with the creator of it all.